Top 3 Watercolor Brands- 2020 Edition

Hey everyone! I thought I would do my version of Arleebean's top 3 watercolor brands video, mostly to distract myself from the madness around ;) This is my usual style of chatty video, ranking starts at 4:00 .
Find all the colors and brands mentioned here-
http://bit.ly/2ZgDcDQ

I based my ranking on my personal preferences of formula, performance, price, location of manufacturer and color range. If you're not familiar with my style of painting, I enjoy painting in a loose fluid manner, and love granulating and bright saturated colors.

Here is a list of my top 3:
Honorable mention- White Nights (Russia) & Aquarius (Poland) paints. These are both beautiful affordable watercolors. I highly recommend them to anyone who wants high quality artist grade paints. Both brands have a wide color selection and lovely formula (pretty consistent across their range). Cons- Only come in full pans (White Nights offer tubes but they are harder to find) and not vegan.

No. 3
Schmincke (Germany) Horadam
These have been my all time favorite for a long time, and they drop to no. 3 for the single reason taht they are not vegan. Sadly. Very very sad. These are incredible. Reliable, consistent, perfect formula in tubes and pans across their entire (great) color range (their pans are unparalleled). Only con is that they are expensive, especially outside of Europe. Perfection. PLEASE make them vegan, drop the oxgall!!

No. 2
Royal Talens Van Gogh (and Rembrandt)
I know this line is marketed in some places as student grade, well, it stands up to all my artist grade paints, bar none. Ok, bar Schmincke and no. 1 in some cases, but this paint is just lovely. The color range is smaller than most artist grade brands, because it only has more affordable pigments. For your cobalts and special Primatek colors, look at Rembrandt (big sister traditional artist grade watercolors from the same manufacturer) and Daniel Smith. These are ridiculously affordable in Europe, they have a beautiful formula, creamy, vibrant... They offer really interesting sets and are a joy to paint with. They come in sets, half pans and tubes and for me personally can be found locally in stores open stock as well. For anyone starting out, who's in Europe and wants something local, affordable and vegan, look no further.

No. 1
Daniel Smith (USA)
This is a not a clear win ;) Together with Van Gogh and in the future (as I run out of my non vegan more expensive pigments) Rembrandt, this is what I'll be buying. Daniel Smith has an unparalleled color range. The paint is reliable and the formula is great (there are some duds, but in a range of like 250 colors I'm not surprised), and they win because of their special paints and being vegan. I wouldn't want to paint without Moonglow, Cascade Green (funnily Arleebean mentions in her video she's over those, well, I'm so not LOL), the Lunar colors... It's only a handful of paints that I feel are essential in my arsenal, but I love them dearly. As for the more traditional paints, I will be going with Royal Talens and perhaps try Lukas (Germany) in the future. Their newer addition of half pans is great, the formula of those is a bit on the dry side, but they rewet and perform beautifully.

Arleebean's video-
http://bit.ly/2U4cs3N

Brands I've tried (these are all well established artist or student grade with easily available pigment information)-
Sennelier
Mijello Mission Gold
Qor
M. Graham
Winsor & Newton
Cotman
Old Holland
Holbein
Shinhan
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